Asia Still Lacks Decent Jobs for Women

Analysis of labor markets in Cambodia, Kazakhstan, and the Philippines show that although social disparities between men and women have been reduced in recent years, women still struggle for equality in the workplace.

7: Gender inequality in the labor market is determined in terms of the seven gender gaps or disparities between men and women: labor force participation, human capital, the unpaid domestic and care work burden, vulnerable employment, wage employment, access to decent work, and access to social protection.

32%: The estimated proportion of women's annual earnings to men's in Kazakhstan. This means that a woman earns 32 cents for every dollar earned by a man. In Cambodia, the gender wage gap is 27% and in the Philippines, it is between 23% and 30%.

28.5 percentage points: The labor force participation gap in the Philippines, higher than 10.7 in Kazakhstan and 7.5 in Cambodia. Women in the Philippines are less likely to be employed or looking actively for a job because of inadequate employment and decent work opportunities, gender segregation in types of training and education, and unpaid domestic labor and care work burden.

3.5 hours per day: The number of extra hours per day Cambodian women work in the home as compared to men's. In Kazakhstan, women spend 2.7 hours more per day than men on unpaid domestic and care work.

84%: The total household time Filipino women provide to child care.

26.2 percentage points: The difference between the 2012 employment rates of men and women in the Philippines. In Kazakhstan, the employment rate gap is 11.6 and in Cambodia, it is 7.5.

8.7 percentage points: Cambodia's vulnerable employment gender gap. The share of women and men in vulnerable employment (the sum of own-account and unpaid contributing family workers) are both very high in the country, but the women's share outnumber the men by 8.7 percentage points.

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